What
follows
here about functionalism and identity theories seems to me as true was
it
was when it was written. As for the Union Theory, should it have been
superceded
by a lot of stuff on Consciousness as Existence?
I sure hope so. There is an abstract / lecture hand-out for the paper
at the end.

A person's mind
includes a sequence of mental or conscious events -- sensations,
perceptions,
thoughts, beliefs, emotions, desires, intentions, and the like. A
person's
mind may also be taken to include a set of dispositions to mental
events,
no doubt to all of the mentioned kinds of them. The dispositions,
including
a supposed sexy sub-set to which Freud paid attention, are neural,
since
there is not anything else they can be. That a neural structure (or
anything
else) is a disposition is merely the fact that it is persistent and the
fact that it together with something else will or would make up a
causal circumstance for a later event, say my conscious hope at this
moment that this paper will
persuade you of something.1

Hume has the
fame of first seeing that there seems no reason to take a person's mind
to
be any more than the sequence of mental events -- we could as well say
mental states -- and the set of dispositions.2 (Of course there is the
implicit fact
that the sequence is internally related in several ways, most notably
in
that some of the events are memories of others -- that is what makes it
a
single sequence.) Hume has the fame, more particularly, of noting that
when
we observe our mental lives, or better, when we recollect the moment
just
past of our mental lives, we never recollect anything but mental
events.
That is, we never recollect anything in any sense mental which is
external
to mental events, which thing possesses, underlies or organizes them. A
person
is not such a mental entity, but, in so far as mental facts are
concerned,
just a single sequence of mental events. Hume's truth should neither be
overlooked
or taken for anything else. It is not a denial of the subjectivity of
mental
events, of which more in due course.

1. Functionalism

The Mind-Body Problem is the
problem of the relation of mental to simultaneous neural events. (It
is not, as I understand it, the problem of the relation of mental
events to
their explanatory antecedents, including neural dispositions.) To deal
with
the Mind-Body Problem we evidently need conceptions of both mental and
neural
events. What in general are mental or conscious events? What is their
nature?
In the past couple of decades, Functionalism has seemed to be an answer
offered
to this question so fundamental to the Philosophy of Mind. Does
Functionalism
really provide an answer, an adequate characterization of mental events
in
general?

There is a lot
of loose talk in this neighbourhood, and much argument by slogan. There
is also a lot of scientized reflection of uncertain philosophical
virtue -- by,
as you might say, those with the policy of Penelope's wooers.3 Also, if
you
are looking for something of which the thesis of variable or multiple
realization
is actually true, you could do worse than by starting with
Functionalism
itself. So it will be as well to be definite about what I have in mind
in
speaking of Functionalism. Let me first exclude some things.

Functionalism
is not the banal assertion that (1) all mental events, however
conceived, at least typically have certain causes and effects.
Everybody believes something
of that sort, save perhaps some remaining defenders of Free Will and a
couple
of Epiphenomenalists. Nor is Functionalism the assertion that (2) all
mental
events, conceived independently of their causes and effects, at least
typically
do have certain causes and effects. Perhaps most non-Functionalist
philosophers
of mind accept something like this, while Strict Functionalists, as I
shall
call them, do not, since they deny the possibility of a conception of
mental
events independent of the causes and effects. Nor is Functionalism to
be
taken as the somewhat stronger proposition of Determinism that (3) all
mental
events, conceived independently of their causes and effects, do always
and
without exception have certain causes and effects. At least very many
non-Functionalists
accept that, while Strict Functionalists do not, again because of the
contained
assumption of an independent conception.

Nor, to turn
away from mental events in general, the genus, is Functionalism to be
understood as the proposition that (4) kinds or species of mental
events, say beliefs or intentions, do have typical kinds or species of
causes and effects. That
is very true. Nor is Functionalism the proposition, which I and many
other
accept, that (5) each of beliefs, intentions and other kinds of mental
events
are to be understood or defined partly in terms of kinds of causes and
effects.
Who ever set out to understand desires wholly independently of action
or
behaviour?

Another thing
to be put aside is (6) the belief that kinds of mental events, as well
as token mental events, can be successfully discriminated, individuated
or identified
just by their causes and effects -- where that is not a claim about
their
nature, or the whole of their nature. The belief is very likely true.
With
respect to events of any kind, what is more common than successful
individuation
by cause or effect or both?

Functionalism
as I am understanding it is also not (7) just the program, obviously a
fruitful one, of investigating, theorizing about, giving formal
accounts of, and finding
analogies to the causal sequences in which human mental events occur --
the
genus of them or its species. That program will contribute to any full
account
of mental events, but is not to be confused with something else. (8)
Let
me add, finally, that there are various theories and doctrines that
fall
under names got by adding a prefix to `Functionalism'. The prefixes
include
`Classical', `Metaphysical', `Methodological', `Machine', `Homuncular',
`Wide',
`Narrow', `Teleological', `Sober', `Weak', and so on. I am concerned
only
with any of these which is or approximates to Functionalism as I am
understanding
it.

Functionalism
as I am understanding it, which comes in two kinds, purports to be a
complete answer to the question of what mental events in general are.
That is, it purports
to give all of the common nature of mental events. Does it? If so it
will
of course distinguish mental events from all else.

In Strict Functionalism, the
first and most interesting of the two kinds, mental events at bottom
are
said to consist in no more than events which stand in certain causal
relations.4
That is, an event in so far as it is mental is at bottom no more than
an
event which stands in certain causal relations. We are to understand,
certainly,
that there is no further true and very different characterization of
mental
events, events in so far as they are mental. They have no further and
very
different mental character.

Mental events,
more particularly, are in causal relations with (i) input, (ii) what
are
called other `inner' events, and (iii) output. That is the basic answer
to
the fundamental question of the Philosophy of Mind. Hence my wanting
that
glass of wine over there consists fundamentally in an event which was
(i)
an effect of such things as the glass of wine, (iia) also an effect of
such things as an inner event having to do with my seeing the glass,
(iib) a cause
of other inner events, and (iii) also the cause of such things as an
arm-movement
in the direction of the glass. This account of my wanting the glass of
wine,
already far from simple because of the occurrences of `such things as',
can
be enlarged by saying of the causal relata of the wanting that they
stand
in causal relations to other things than the wanting. We thus get a
`holistic'
account of the event, something in accord with `the holism of the
psychological'.
But what we have in description of the mental event or the event as
mental
remains no more than causal relations.

All that is pretty vague, but
here is no need to be more precise.

Shall we take
it that Strict Functionalism asserts of the mental events of which we
know most, our human mental events, that they have no other properties
than the
causal ones? Shall we take it, that is, whatever we say about how they
are
`realized' in our brains, that they do not have neural properties?
Philosophers
who do this evidently make their account of our minds, of our mental
events,
ethereal. Those of them who are fleeing traditional mystery about the
mind,
fleeing talk of ghostly stuff, succeed in making our mental events into
yet
less than ghostly stuff. It is perhaps not careless to say that these
philosophers
at least aspire to make our mental events into no more than relations.
In
defining Strict Functionalism, let us not take this disastrous path.

Let us rather
follow other philosophers to be found in this neighbourhood and take it
that
in Strict Functionalism the mental events of which we know most, human
mental events, are also neural events. This Identity Theory, which I
shall take as
contained in the Functionalism in question, reduces to just the
proposition that certain of our neural events have certain causes and
effects. (The proposition
both completes this Functionalism's account of our mental events and
serves
as its solution to the Mind-Body Problem in so far as we humans are
concerned.)
But it is noted that it is a possibility of some sort that events of
other
kinds than neural, say silicon events for a start, could stand in the
same
causal relations. Indeed, silicon events could have replaced our neural
events
without any repercussion for the given facts of mentality. The silicon
events
could have stood in the same causal connections. This is the
proposition
of variable realization or multiple realization, of which a great deal
is
made.

So much for how
I understand Functionalism and in particular Strict Functionalism.
Supporters of Strict Functionalism typically pass by a basic and
general objection to
their conception of our mental events -- often pass it by in the course
of
considering what seem to me lesser objections which are by-products of
the
basic and general one. Let us not follow them, but hesitate.

What we have
at bottom is that human mental events in so far as they are mental
consist
in no more than events which are certain effects and causes -- effects
of
input and other inner events, causes of other inner events and output.
(Add
more talk of causal relations if you like.) And, whatever might have
replaced them, our human mental events are also neural. That is all
there is to them.
No matter what is taken to be essential to them, which of course is
their
causal connections, they are just neural events in certain causal
connections.
It is imperative to note that they are not made anything more than that
by
the proposition about variable realization or replaceability. It
doesn't
add anything more about their nature, constituents, or properties.
Nothing
at all.

Will it be said
that talk of nature, constituents and properties is obscure and
doctrine-ridden? No doubt, and rightly, but the talk will have to be
clarified in accordance with the sound idea that a thing's own nature,
constituents or properties do not include the thing's uniqueness or
want of uniqueness in all or any respects. To discover that something
is replaceable by something else is not
to discover more of its nature. No question about it itself is answered
by
way of propositions about its uniqueness or replaceability. There seems
even
more reason to say this than to say the same about propositions about a
thing's
relations generally.

I suspect that
in the haze of doctrine, many Functionalists and their
fellow-travellers
do not see that nothing is added to their account of our mental events
as neural effects and causes by the proposition of variable
realization.5 They
mistakenly suppose that by variable realization, by what they might
call
call untying the mental from just the neural, or extending the mental
beyond
the neural, or indeed making the mental independent of the neural, they
have
given some place or recognition to an inescapable conviction about the
mental,
a conviction which is one part of or one thing expressed in our
ordinary
conception of our mental events. That conviction is simply that our
mental
events have other or more than neural and causal properties. More will
be
said of our ordinary conception of mental events in the second part of
this
paper, in another connection. That the given conviction is inescapable
and
part of the conception seems to me beyond doubt.

To speak differently, given
that this Functionalism reduces human mental events to neural events in
certain causal connections, it shares the principal rebarbativeness of
a family of doctrines including Eliminative Materialism and the earlier
`nothing-but'
Materialism rejected by Davidson and almost everyone else -- the
Materialism
that issues in the declaration `Conceiving the Art of the Fugue was
nothing
but a complex neural event'.6 That family of doctrines includes a
denial
of our mental events as having other than or more than neural and
causal
properties. That is rebarbative, and no doubt Strict Functionalism
taken
as an account of our mental events will because of this basic and
general
objection follow Behaviourism into the honourable past of the
Philosophy
of Mind.

The objection
of rebarbativeness does not overlook differences between Functionalism
and members of the given family of doctrines. I am aware for a start
that Eliminative Materialism may be said to deny, and to intend to
deny, the existence of mental
events, and that Functionalism may be said to intend to save them, to
offer
an account of them, indeed to express our common conception of them.
Only
for Eliminative Materialism are our common mental categories like
categories
in witchcraft. The two doctrines are nevertheless alike in allowing to
what
we take to be our mental events only some or other neural and causal
properties.
It is for this reason that Functionalism will follow Behaviourism into
the
past.

This will happen, as it seems
to me, as soon as the haze clears, despite the fact that it is
not easy to construct a fundamental argument against Strict
Functionalism.7 This is so since it is difficult, perhaps impossible,
to find a premise more
secure than what we adversaries of this Functionalism are asked to
prove,
that our mental events satisfy the inescapable conviction that they
have
other or more than neural and causal properties. This is annoying but
not
much of a weakness of our case, any more than it it a weakness of my
belief
that I am now in pain that I probably cannot construct an argument with
a
premise stronger than that belief. Hume, by the way, said exactly the
same
of arguing against someone who claims to perceive a self in addition to
mental
events. For Hume, there was nothing more secure than that there is no
such
perception to be had.

Consider a second
Functionalism, not strict. It is distinct from certain other
philosophies of mind, indeed many, only in emphasis. Mental events in
general are said to have their causal properties as their essential or
distinctive properties, and of course also said to have neural or
silicon properties or the like. But it is now allowed that some mental
events may have other properties, taken
as needing less emphasis. They may have qualities spoken of in terms of
`qualia',
or `what something is like' or `what it is like to be something', or
`raw
feels'. In particular some of our human mental events may have these
additional
properties.

This Lenient
Functionalism, as implied, allows for some human mental events which
lack
the additional qualities. Thus it faces the general objection that in
part
it has the rebarbative character of Eliminative Materialism and the
like.
Its careless and curiously disjunctive conception of the other human
mental
events, which have or may have the additional properties, is in line
with
the thoughts of various defenders of mental events as ordinarily
conceived.
That careless conception and the thoughts from which it comes are in my
judgement
very useful but insufficient. They do not try to characterize directly
and
in a general way the nature of mental events. Be that as it may,
however, the careless conception in assigning certain properties to
some mental events
is enough to stand in the way of the Identity Theory included in
Lenient
Functionalism as well as in Strict Functionalism.

We will be coming back to
Identity Theories, and to what may be a proof of their failure --
which proof I rely upon in what has just been said about Lenient
Functionalism. As mentioned earlier, we shall also be considering our
ordinary conception of our mental events -- and what can be made of it.
Certainly it is an attempt
to characterize directly and in a general way the nature of our mental
events.
Consider now a more radical objection to Strict Functionalism, again
overlooked
by its proponents in their concern with this or that lesser difficulty.
It
is that this Functionalism is incoherent.

As remarked above, any
adequate account of mental events in general must distinguish them from
all else. How does Strict Functionalism attempt this? How does it try
to
distinguish these events from others? We are told that at bottom they
are
events which have certain causes and certain effects. The
identification of
these mental events then plainly depends on the identification of the
causes
and effects. It depends in part on the identification of input and
output
events. For present purposes, we can restrict ourselves to input and
output
events, and leave aside other inner events.

Which are these
input and output events? What distinguishes input events from others,
and
what distinguishes output events from others? Let us again think of
humans. What distinguishes input events, such as an input event
involving the glass of wine, from other environmental events which are
causal with respect to
humans, say one having to do with a flea of mine of which I am unaware?
Clearly
input events are not all the environmental-causal events. What
distinguishes
output events, such as the arm-movement towards the glass, from other
bodily
events which are effects of internal human causes, say the bodily event
which
is unintended perspiration? Clearly output events are not all such
bodily-effect
events. To speak differently, Functionalists are not and cannot be
concerned
with all the causal sequences which run through a body, but only some.
They
want the ones some of whose inner events are mental. How do they find
them?

It is pretty
clear how Strict Functionalism standardly proceeds. What it in fact
does,
unreflectively, is to take input as exactly environmental causes of
mental
events, with the mental events understood in something other than the
causal
way. Plainly they are conceived in our ordinary way. For a start, these
mental
events are conceived as having more than causal and neural properties.
So
with output. That is bodily effects of mental events, with those mental
events understood in something other than the causal way. It is our
ordinary way.

But then Strict
Functionalism proceeds in this standard way on the basis of exactly
what
it denies, a true characterization of the nature of mental events
themselves
in terms of something other than their causal relations. It is
incoherent
in that it proceeds precisely on the basis of what it denies.8

Will you say
at this point that I have missed or obscured a simple point? Science
has
regularly been interested in and identified some class of events, say
certain
hereditary events, maybe having to do with eye-colour. It has taken
this
class of events to have a cause, and hypothesized about the nature of
that
cause. Often its nature has been discovered. This is how things went
with
the gene. Will you say that Functionalism does just this sort of
reputable thing?

That seems to
me a confusion. The scientific procedure is not near to the standard
procedure of Functionalism. Functionalism begins, not with with
something analagous to hereditary events, already identified, but with
something analagous to
the gene, which it then uses to identify other events, and which it
then
claims to understand wholly in terms of those events. It denies that it
presupposes
and depends on a conception of something analagous to the gene, but, as
said,
it does use just that conception in order to specify the causal relata.
That
seems to me not good science but bad philosophy. If the science was
analagous,
and bad, it would proceed from the hereditary events to the gene, and
then
deny it used and depended on any other conception of the hereditary
events
but their being effects of the gene.

Is it necessary
that Strict Functionalism proceeds in its standard way? Perhaps it can
contemplate only two other options. It must (a) pick out a sub-class of
environmental-causal events or a sub-class of bodily-effect events by
means which make no reference at all to mental events, or (b) pick out
the sub-classes by means of a reference
to mental events which does not render Functionalism incoherent.

Perhaps some
will be tempted to think that this Functionalism can proceed in the
first
way. They will say something of the following sort. `Well, can't we
just
start by specifying a class of environmental causes straight-off,
including
causes of receptor-events in eyes and ears, and specifying a class of
bodily
effects straight-off, say limb-movements and speech-productions -- and
then
say mental events are what come in the middle? How does that presuppose
an idea of mental events which makes the whole thing incoherent?'

There is a plain reply, that
the procedure does depend on the fatal idea, at the start. Specifying
the sub-class of environmental causes is and can only be done by
choosing
those that that have certain effects, mental events somehow conceived.
Necessarily
these mental events are conceived as other than just effects of
environmental
causes. So with specifying the right class of bodily effects. That is
how
the unnoticed flea and the perspiration get excluded, as they need to
be.

Something else
does not need to be added, but usefully can be. There is no special or
intrinsic character had by some environmental causes and some bodily
effects and such
that the Functionalist can somehow depend on this character to advance
her
enterprise. Special categories of environmental causes and bodily
effects do not pick themselves out. One relevant fact here is that it
is conceptually and nomically possible that any environmental cause and
any bodily effect go with no mental event at all, however conceived.
This is so of stimulation of the retinas and of an arm movement in the
direction of a glass of wine or my lips producing the sounds in `Pass
me that glass, sweetheart'.

If the first
option fails, what of the second? Can Strict Functionalism pick out
sub-classes of causal-environmental events and bodily-effect events by
means of a reference to mental events which does not make it
incoherent? Perhaps you will be tempted
for a moment to the idea that Functionalism can depend on this
conception
of mental events: those events to which we ordinarily but mistakenly or
wholly
unenlighteningly ascribe a certain character. This character will be
the
one spoken of in terms of `qualia', `what it is like to be something',
and
so on.

This option has
several peculiarities, including its own fatal disability. It depends
on
the thought that we mistakenly or unenlighteningly characterize a
certain
set of events. But mistakenly or unenlighteningly characterizing a set
of
events requires that we must already have discriminated them. We must
have
a conception of them. This cannot be a conception that picks out
nothing,
or anything. Thus this line of Functionalist thought also depends, at
one
remove, on exactly what it denies, a conception of mental events in
terms
of other than their causes and effects.9

Let me make one
final remark here on something implicit in what has been said. If
Strict
Functionalism did have no conception of the genus mental events but the
causal
one, or no conceptions of such species as belief and intention but
causal
ones, all its propositions would have an analytic nature which they
seem
to lack -- and which, I think, most Functionalists must wish them to
lack.
For a start `mental events in general are those which have certain
causes
and effects' would be nothing other than the proposition `events which
have certain causes and effects do have those causes and effects'.

2. Identity
Theories

It was said above that we have an
ordinary conception of our mental events, a conception of their general
nature, a conception which includes the conviction that they have other
or more than neural and causal properties. It is a conception owed to
direct reflection on all of them, and in particular to our capability
of
recalling any mental event just past. (That we can do this is surely
beyond
question. Whether this recalling was misdescribed by advocates of
`introspection'
is a question that can be put aside.) The conception is therefore owed
to
what can be called Mental Realism, the policy of reflecting directly on
mental
events in their reality rather than turning away to this or that more
tractable
fact pertaining to them, such as the logico-linguistic features of
sentences
about them10 or their causal relations, or whatever else.

When I recall
my experience or mental event a moment ago of seeing the line of trees
out the window, I recall a content. It is not the trees, since if my
visual cortex
and a good deal more of my brain had been the same, but those trees had
not
existed, I would have had the same experience with the same content.
This
content is for me very certainly not just a bare causal term, like
something-I-know-not-what
in a mechanism about which I know only what affects it and what it
affects.
Indeed, it seems that contents can exist for me without my knowing
their
causal relations. Further, as hardly needs to be added, the content I
recall
is for me not at all a neural fact -- and hence not something only
causal
and neural.

The idea of content is already
the idea of something necessarily in relation to something else. That
the idea of content is in this way relational is owed to the recallable
fact of something distinct from content but also, as we can say, within
the
experience or mental event. It is another component. This other thing,
for
various reasons, is not a person. Initially we are tempted, not only by
tradition,
to call it a subject. Even initially we can resist the temptation to
make
more of it than we can discern, more of it than a property of a mental
event.
We can have, I think, no view of it as a causal term, and certainly no
view
of it as neural.

As for the relation between
subject and content in a mental event, it is difficult to resist an
initial step of taking them to be in a way interdependent. No content
without
subject, and no subject without some or other content.

There is no doubt that such
reflections as these rapidly issue in problems. One group of problems
has to do with a content's standing in a second relation. This is its
relation
to an object -- in the example, the content's relation to the trees.
This
relation, we naturally say in beginning, consists in a content's being
an
effect of and representative of the object. Trying to make some initial
sense
of representation, and the true thought that in standard representation
we
need to be aware of what does the representing, may result in further
reflections
on the relation between content and what was called subject. It may
result
in the conclusion that this relation is certainly not one such that the
subject
is standardly aware of the content -- aware of it in the way that I am
aware
of the trees. This is a denial of contents as subjective objects of
awareness,
which is to say as sense data and the like.11

An attempt to
understand the second part of the content-object relation in terms of
the
second -- to understand representation in terms of the causal relation
--
may also force reflection on the subject-content relation, and indeed
issue
in the conclusion that even restrained talk of a subject is perhaps
dispensable. The question arises, at any rate, of whether we should try
to restrict ourselves
just to some notion of non-standard awareness of content.

A further group
of problems has to do with another of our convictions, so far
unmentioned. It is the conviction of the givenness of objects, the
givenness of the world.
It includes a denial of any kind of awareness of content as against
object,
an understanding of content as the presentation of object, and a
rejection
of global scepticism about the world. The denial of any kind of
awareness
of content makes for yet more difficulty about what was initially
called
the subject-content relation.

I wish to propose but one
proposition in connection with this brisk and less than perfectly
comprehensible summary, or rather, in connection with the reflections
summarized.12 It is a proposition which concedes and does not seek to
avoid the great difficulties
faced in thinking directly about the mental. The proposition is that
the
reflections have a distinctive subject-matter, certainly not only
causal
and/or neural, whose existence is undeniable. It is a subject-matter
which
determines agreement or disagreement with the admittedly deflationary
course
of reflections. The subject-matter exists as the subject-matter of
those
deflationary reflections, and certainly does not evaporate in the
course
of them. Mental events have distinctive properties or a distinctive
character,
badly understood but undeniable.

In sum, each
mental event has what can be called, a little grandly, a character of
interdependent duality, a duality of two interdependent parts. Put into
somewhat philosophical language, this is our ordinary conception of our
mental events. (The duality, as will be noted, has nothing to do with
mind-brain dualism.) As we can say
briefly and less grandly, each mental event has a character of
subjectivity.

So -- we can
at least begin to characterize the general nature itself of mental
events.
And we need to. To flee the obscurity, to eschew Mental Realism, is to
fail
to enter into what has first claim on the name of Philosophy of Mind.
It
is to fail to deal with its fundamental question. Giving up on Mental
Realism also makes any true solution to the Mind-Body Problem highly
unlikely. If
we have no decent sense of the nature of mind, what will keep us from
mistaken
views of its relation to body?

What is that
relation? How are properly-conceived mental events related to neural
events,
in particular events within a human Central Nervous System? Neural
events
are electro-chemical events. Their nature is becoming increasingly
well-known.
It is evidently unlike the nature of mental events just indicated.

Let me note,
however, that neural events are not effectively characterized as
physical
events. They are not thereby distinguished from mental events, and, as
might
also be said, they are too much distinguished from them. There is a
basic
conception of what is physical, having to do in part with extension in
space
and time, which conviction does not have the disability of being
relativized
to contemporary science, future science or completed science. There
seems
to me no serious objection to regarding mental events as physical
events
according to the basic conception. That is not to say that their mental
properties
are electro-chemical, or that the Mind-Body Problem is resolved or made
much
easier. It is made somewhat easier by the fact that the mental and
neural
realms are allowed to have something in common, physicality.

The various sciences which
together make up neuroscience may be said now to have established a
general proposition to which empirical philosophers and commonsensical
persons
have long been inclined. That is the proposition that every mental
event
is intimately related to a neural event: in a kind of necessary
connection with it. Just as there are no ghosts, which is to say no
minds or persons floating free of bodies, so there are no ghostly
mental events either. To
speak of a neural event, of course, is not necessarily to speak of
anything simple, anything owed to outmoded doctrines of brain
localization.

The Proposition
of Psychoneural Intimacy by itself rules out some philosophical
theories
about mind and brain. (It rules out, for example, the central idea of
Dualist Interactionism. That idea is that sometimes an earlier mental
event, somehow independent of the brain, causes a later neural event,
and sometimes an earlier
neural event causes a later mental event as independent.) The
Proposition of Psychoneural Intimacy, for good or ill, has as a natural
product the theory,
or rather the family of theories, to the effect that each mental event
is
identical with a neural event. Such mind-brain theories, Identity
Theories,
have had a certain dominance which they may now be losing. They are, I
think,
open to a certain refutation.

The refutation
depends, first, on what has already been asserted, that mental events
have
a certain distinctive character, different from that of neural
events.13
The refutation depends, secondly, on taking a certain clear view of
what
must be meant by asserting of one event e1 that it was numerically
identical
to another, e2. What must be meant is that the one event had all and
only
the properties of the other, or that the referent of `e1' had all and
only
the properties of the referent of `e2'. This view of identity, owed to
Leibniz,
is distinct from much else, including a good deal about theoretic
reduction,
bridge laws and the like, which in fact does not serve the purposes of
Identity Theorists. In fact, much that is said of theoretic reduction
and the like is more in accord with something to which we will come,
the Union Theory.

Thirdly, the
refutation depends on asking a certain question of any Identity Theory.
What
properties does the theory take a mental event to have had?

There are two
possible answers. If the answer given is that the mental event had only
mental
properties, as ordinarily or realistically conceived, then a certain
intolerable
conclusion follows. The neural event to which it was identical also had
only
such mental properties. The given answer mentalizes the brain. Similar
reasoning shows the absurdity of answering, to a related question, that
the neural event
had only neural properties. In this case the mind is neuralized. These
intolerable
conclusions, what can be called True Identity Theories, might be said
to
respect the Proposition of Psychoneural Intimacy. That is little
consolation.

There are other
Identity Theories, so called, which may result partly from seeing the
absurdity of True Identity Theories. At any rate, they clearly intend
something different. In answer to the question of what properties were
had by the mental event, they answer that it had both mental and neural
properties. This enables them
to avoid mentalizing the brain or neuralizing the mind. This also makes
them
into something very different from True Identity Theories. They are
Dualistic
Identity Theories. They involve a dualism of properties. But that is
not
what is most important.

One of two things that are
important has to do with a further feature or features which these
theories have, and a certain general requirement essential to thinking
of
mind and brain.14 First the general requirement.

(i) We find it
impossible to believe that mental events or mental facts, these being
conceived
in the ordinary way, are not part of the explanations of our actions.
Such mental events or facts are ineliminable parts of the explanations
of actions, and also of later mental events. This requirement that we
put on theories of mind and brain can be called the Proposition of
Mental Indispensability, or indeed the Proposition on the Falsehood of
Epiphenomenalism. Certainly it is not inconsistent with neuroscience.

Dualistic Identity Theories,
as I am understanding them, have the further feature that they assign
causal efficacy to only the neural properties of mental events. In
part,
as it seems to me, this move is owed to a misconception of
neuroscience. They
also have the further feature that they assert only the relation of
identity
with respect to the neural and the mental properties of a mental event.
What
this comes to, evidently, is that all that they assert of the neural
properties
and the mental properties is that they were properties of the one
event.
It is denied, or not asserted, that the neural and mental properties
were
in nomic or lawlike connection. For this reason such theories are also
spoken
of as Token Identity Theories as against Type Identity Theories.15

Dualistic Identity Theories,
despite strenuous attempts to be in accord with it, therefore run
afoul of the Proposition of Mental Indispensability. The mental
properties of an event are given no causal role with respect to later
mental events and
actions. They are no more given a causal role than the colour of
something is given a causal role by the fact that the weight of the
thing has such a
role.16 It may be thought that they could still satisfy the mentioned
Proposition
if they were to allow for nomic connection between mental and neural
properties,
but this they do not do.17

(ii) The second
important thing to be noted about Dualistic Identity Theories is that
contrary
to natural expectation they also fail to satisfy The Proposition of
Psychoneural Intimacy. It seems easy to think that anything calling
itself an Identity Theory must satisfy the Proposition, but this is not
so. The Identity Theories we are considering are merely to the effect
that a mental property is a property
of an event which also has a neural property. That by itself is far
from
giving us what the Proposition of Psychoneural Intimacy requires, which
is
some kind of necessary connection between the mental and the neural. A
mental
property is made no more intimate with a physical than my height with
my
politics.

Still, it is
not possible in this paper to do more than sketch a central part of the
proposed refutation of Identity Theories. Without attempting more, I
now turn to what
seems to me a superior proposal about the Mind-Body Problem.

3. The Union
Theory

An arguable solution to
the mind-body problem must be a product of at least the several
requirements or constraints that have been mentioned. It must proceed
from an adequate conception of the mental, as Functionalism does not.
It must be in accordance with Psychoneural Intimacy and also Mental
Indispensability, which is not the case with the Dualistic Identity
Theories.

The Theory of
Psychoneural Union, or the Union Theory, consists in three parts, the
first
being a certain hypothesis. That hypothesis, the Hypothesis of
Psychoneural
Nomic Correlation or just the Correlation Hypothesis, has to do with a
mental event and a simultaneous neural event. It is to the effect that
they stand in a certain connection. The hypothesis is this:

For each mental
event of a given type there exists some simultaneous neural event of
one
of a certain set of types. The existence of the neural event
necessitates
the existence of the mental event, the mental event thus being
necessary
to the neural event. Any other neural event of any of the mentioned set
of types will therefore stand in the same relations to another mental
event of
the given type.18

The hypothesis
relates mental events only to neural events, and for that reason alone
is
different from the idea of Functionalists about the variable
realization
of mental events not only in our Central Nervous Systems, but in
silicon
and whatever else. The hypothesis does specify a many-one relation, but
this
holds between just the neural realm by itself and the mental. It
specifies
this many-one relation rather than a one-one relation since it appears
to
be a fact that different types of neural events can stand go with but
one
type of mental event.19

The Correlation
Hypothesis depends on an explication of nomic relations, and in
particular
the relation of two events such that the first necessitates the second
and
the second is necessary to the first. What the relation comes to, in my
view,
is that certain conditional statements are true. For one thing to
necessitate
another is for it to be true, roughly, that since the first occurred,
then,
whatever else had been happening, the second would still have occurred.
The
Hypothesis, since it concerns simultaneous events, may with reason be
said
not to take the neural event as causal with respect to the mental, or
of
course the mental event as causal with respect to the neural. The
Hypothesis
asserts more than the supervenience of the mental on the physical,
since
supervenience as usually understood falls short of being nomic
connection.20

What the Correlation
Hypothesis comes to in part, informally speaking and by way of an
example, is that my thought of Lublin a moment ago stood in a certain
tight relation with a certain neural event, and if another event of
exactly that type occurs,
I or somebody else will be thinking of Lublin in exactly the same way.

There is nothing in the
mentioned fairly standard explication of nomic elations which stands in
the way of such relations holding between mental and neural events, as
the Hypothesis supposes. Further, there is very impressive
neuroscientific evidence for the hypothesis. In my estimate the
evidence is overwhelming. Even if philosophical objections to the
hypothesis did not seem open to good
rejoinders, as they do, the evidence could be taken to overbear the
objections.21
To speak too quickly, if there is a contest between a philosophical
doctrine
of the mental which stands in the way of its being in nomic connection
with
the neural, and, on the other hand, neuroscientific evidence that the
mental
is in nomic connection with the neural, it is the doctrine that must
give
way.

The second part
of the Union Theory has to do with the causation of a mental event and
the simultaneous neural event. (The causation is sometimes or often or
perhaps nearly always a matter of the neural dispositions mentioned in
passing at
the start of this paper.) If we consider such a pair of events, as it
seems
to me, we must conclude that they constitute not two effects but one.
This
is only initially surprising, and clearly they must be so regarded. The
argument
rests in part on the idea that since a mental event, as just asserted,
is
necessary to the simultaneous neural event, it cannot be that the
neural
event is by itself necessitated by some prior causal circumstance.
There
can be no prior causal circumstance, something akin to a causally
sufficient
condition, for the neural event alone. If there were such a
guaranteeing
thing, the neural event would not have the simultaneous mental event as
a
necessary condition. It would not be dependent upon it.

The Union Theory in its third
part is simply that each of a mental event and the simultaneous neural
event may be causal with respect to an ensuing action or a later mental
event. Each of the mental event and the neural event is within a causal
circumstance
for the action or later mental event.

The Union Theory, then, is
that a mental event and the simultaneous neural event are nomically
related, as specified by the Correlation Hypothesis, and that they
constitute a single effect, and that each event may be causal with
respect to an action or later mental event. (It is also true that the
two events are in a less important sense a single cause.) The theory
proceeds from an adequate conception of mental events. It will be
evident that it is in accord with the Proposition of Psychoneural
Intimacy. This is a matter of its first two parts. It will be equally
evident that in virtue of its third part it is in accord with the
Proposition of Mental Indispensability.

It is easy not
to see clearly the similarities and disimilarities which hold between
mind-brain theories, and assumptions as to such similarities and
dismimilarities influence us too much. Let me then examine some
assumptions. It may be supposed, first,
that the Union Theory is properly spoken of as a dualism or dualistic
while
Identity Theories are not. In fact this is as good as a mistake.

Certainly there
is every reason to regard the Union Theory as `more dualistic' than
True
Identity Theories, but they are open to the fatal objections noticed
earlier
and in any case are a minority of contemporary Identity Theories. Most
contemporary Identity Theories, including the best-known one,
Davidson's Anomalous Monism, are or appear to be Dualistic Identity
Theories.

What these come
to, when characterized as they were earlier, is the proposition that a
mental property is a property of one event which also has a neural
property. That is all that the talk of identity comes to. The Union
Theory, in contrast, was expressed as the proposition that a mental and
a simultaneous neural event
are nomically connected, and a single effect, and that both events are
causal
with respect to actions and later mental events.

These ways of
speaking produce the illusion that Dualistic Identity Theories are
`less
dualistic' than the Union Theory. But it is no more than an illusion.
There
is no obstacle whatever in the way of stating the Union Theory in such
a
way that it disappears. What we can say is that the Union Theory comes
to
this: the mental and the neural properties of an event are nomically
connected, and a single effect, and both properties are causal with
respect to actions and later mental events. Both of Dualistic Identity
Theories and the Union Theory, if stated with full metaphysical or
ontological propriety, would in
my view be stated in terms of individual as against general properties
of
our Central Nervous Systems. No doubt we should all go in for more
metaphysical or ontological propriety.

Some readers
may now wonder if the Union Theory is approximate to one of several
sorts
of Identity Theory famously discriminated by Davidson. He wrote:

It may make the
situation clearer to give a fourfold classification of theories of the
relation
between mental and physical events that emphasizes the independence of
claims
about laws and claims of identity. One the one hand there are those who
assert, and those who deny, the existence of psychophysical laws; on
the other hand
there are those who say mental events are identical with physical and
those
who deny this. Theories are thus divided into four sorts: nomological
monism,
which affirms that there are correlating laws and that the events
correlated
are one (materialists belong in this category); nomological dualism,
which
comprises various forms of parallelism, interactionism, and
epiphenomenalism;
anomalous dualism, which combines ontological dualism with the general
failure
of laws correlating the mental and the physical (Cartesianism). And
finally
there is anomalous monism, which classifies the position I wish to
occupy.22

There is much
that might be said about this, in addition to what has been noticed
already -- that anomalous monism (or Token Identity Theory) appears to
assert a dualism
of properties, and hence is a Dualistic Identity Theory, and that in
general
it is misleading to speak of the mental as against the physical rather
than
the mental as against the neural.

With respect
to nomological monism (or Type Identity Theory) it is impossible that
any
consistent doctrine be monistic, in the strict sense of concerning but
one
thing and hence being a True Identity Theory, and also include nomic or
lawlike
connection within itself. Nomic connection requires two things. But of
course
the label nomological monism can be and is used to cover the
proposition
of which we know, that a mental and a physical property are both
properties of one thing, a Dualistic Identity Theory.

Given this second usage, to
come to the main question now under consideration, the Union Theory
can of course be taken as approximate to nomological monism. Perhaps it
is
closest to that. However, it can also be taken as about as approximate
to
nomological dualism, although it is none of epiphenomenalism,
interactionism, or parallelism. (The latter, I take it, cannot be what
is usually often meant
by `parallelism', which is the doctrine that the explanation of the
correlation
of mental and neural events is not within those events, a matter of
their
nomic connection, but a matter of God's ongoing control or whatever.)
Nothing
hangs on whether the Union Theory is assimilated to nomological monism
or
nomological dualism.Its name has the virtue
of distinguishing it from other forms of both, and much else that is
in some relation to it.

There is also
a more general conclusion to be drawn from these reflections on
Davidson's
characterization. `Nomism' and `dualism' are no longer of much use, and
need
a long rest. The same is true of `Identity Theory'.

As with any philosophical
theory, the Union Theory's worth needs to be judged partly by its
capability of resisting objections. Of course there are very many of
these, deriving from a wide range of philosophical doctrines,
commitments and impulses. Let
me finish by glancing at one objection.

The Union Theory is a
paradigmatic instance of what is usually called Individualism, as
against
Anti-Individualism or Externalism. What this comes to, it might be
said,
is that the Union Theory offers explanations of the occurrence of a
mental
event wholly in terms of facts internal to the individual or person.
These
explanations are not partly in terms of facts external to the
individual,
facts of the individual's environment, in particular her linguistic
environment.

But that characterization of
the Union Theory may be unenlightening or misleading. Of course the
Union
Theory does consort perfectly with plain facts about the earlier
explanatory
role of environment with respect to mental events. We see, hear, and
learn,
with the eventual result that certain mental events occur. However, at
the
end of the story, there are sufficient explanations of those events
within
the individual.

As it seems to
Tyler Burge, the Individualism of the Union Theory is faulted by what
is
taken to be the provable proposition that there is no sufficient
explanation of at least certain mental events within the individual.
Given the different things meant by `arthritis' in two neurally
identical but linguistically different
worlds, a man's thought in one world that he is has arthritis in his
thigh
may be false, and the neurally identical man's thought in the other
world
that he has arthritis in his thigh may be true, and the two thoughts
may
be different. If so, Individualism and the Union Theory in particular
are
refuted.23

One response
to this doctrine has to do with its central proposition. That is
somehow
to the effect that mental events have a dependency on environment which
is
distinct from the standard dependency consistent with the Union Theory
and
much else -- a special dependency somehow distinct from the standard
dependency involving eyes, ears and learning, however the special
dependency may involve the standard dependency.

That special
dependency remains obscure, true to its Hegelian ancestry. If it were
to
amount to no more than the fact that environmental facts enter into the
individuation in a certain sense of mental events, then
Anti-Individualism would be consistent with Union Theory. This is so
since something can contribute to the individuation of something else
without being at all explanatory of it -- part of a full explanation of
it. Effects and spatio-temporal location of something may contribute
to its individuation. There are reasons for thinking, furthermore, that
special
dependency must indeed be conceived in terms of such individuation or
something
like it. Roughly speaking, all other alternatives are unbelievable or
pretty
much a mystery.24

Mind-body
problem = the relation of mental to simultaneous neural events.
Proposed
solutions obviously require and depend on a conception of mental
events.

Functionalism -- much loose talk of.
When philosophically interesting, claims to be a complete
answer to the question of what mental events in general are, to give
all
of the common nature of mental events. Two kinds of interesting
Functionalism.

Strict Functionalism = mental events
consist in no more than events in certain causal relations -- to input,
other `inner' events, and output.

Lenient Functionalism = mental events
consist essentially in events in certain causal relations, but the
events may have other properties -- perhaps `qualia'. In part, faces
objection of rebarbativeness. Also an objection re Identity Theory
contained
in both kinds of Functionalism.

Objection
of incoherence = Strict Functionalism depends on what it denies, a
non-Functionalist
account of mental events.

Realist conception of mental events:
each involves a related subjective part and a content. Content
may also be related to object.

How are mental events (which are also
physical) related to neural events?

Proposition
of psychoneural intimacy suggests an Identity Theory as an account of
the psychoneural relation.

Refutation:
What properties did M1 have? Answer that it had only mental ones
produces
absurdity. (True Identity Theories) Answer that it had both mental and
neural
ones, conjoined with neural causation, produces epiphenomenalism.
(Dualistic Identity Theories)

Union Theory
asserts nomic or lawlike connection rather than identity between M1 and
N1.
Has three parts.

Correlation
Hypothesis: For each mental event of a given type there exists some
simultaneous
neural event of one of a certain set of types. The neural event
necessitates
the mental event, the mental event thus being necessary to the neural
event. Any other neural event of any of the set of types will therefore
stand in
the same relations to another mental event of the given type.

Causation
of psychoneural pairs: each such pair consists in not two effects but
one. Psychoneural pair
causal with respect to later pairs and also actions.

Union Theory
no more `dualistic' than Dualistic Identity Theories. Terms `dualism'
and `monism' or `Identity Theory' now pretty useless.

Union Theory
is an instance of `Individualism' rather than `Anti-Individualism' or
`Externalism' in the Philosophy of Mind. The theory superior to
Externalist theories.

Notes

1. This paper in its second
and third sections is hardly more than a summary of what is laid out
elsewhere,
mainly in Chs. 1-6 of my A Theory of Determinism: The Mind,
Neuroscience,
and Life-Hopes (Oxford University Press, 1988), and identically in a
paperback
of Chs. 1-6 of that book, Mind and Brain (Oxford University Press,
1990).
For a short, untechnical account, see Chs. 1-6 of How Free Are You? The
Determinism
Problem (Oxford University Press, 1993. For comments on earlier drafts
of
the present paper, I am really grateful to Jonathan Blamey, Tim Crane,
John
Heil, Jennifer Hornsby, O. R. Jones, E. J. Lowe, Paul Noordhof, Jane
O'Grady,
and Mike Targett. We are not all in agreement. Perhaps not in perfect
mutual
comprehension either.

2. David Hume,
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part 4, Section 6.

3. `Those who
study particular sciences and neglect philosophy are like Penelope's
wooers, who made love to the waiting women.' Aristippus. Bacon,
Apothogems, No. 189.

4. I leave out
complications having to do with logical or computational as against
causal
relations, which do not affect the issue.

5. Perhaps this
is true of Kim Sterelny, The Representational Theory of Mind
(Blackwells, 1990) Others with iron stomachs do certainly see the fact.
David Lewis did
so in his early paper, `An Argument for the Identity Theory', Journal
of
Philosophy, 1966.

7. The objection of
rebarbativeness can be said to beg the question, and hence not to be
`an
argument'. That shows that there is a role in inquiry for something
other
than `arguments', or, better, despite what I say in the text, that
`arguments'
can be too narrowly conceived.

9. There is also what may
reduce to a variant of the second option, proposed to me by Paul
Noordhof. It is that the Functionalist can initially identify mental
events as those events to which we have direct or introspective access,
without saying
anything of their nature. This needs more attention than I have room to
give
it here. So does what may be regarded as a general response to the
incoherence
objection by Tim Crane in his `Mental Causation and Mental Reality',
Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 1992, pp. 193-5.

12. The reflections in
question are pursued in `Seeing Things', forthcoming in Synthese. I
refer
to them partly for the additional reason that they may indicate that
those
who espouse Mental Realism are not necessarily inclined to
free-and-easy or
credulous thinking about the mind.

13. The proposition that
mental events have this distinctive character of course makes pointless
the Identity Theory within Strict Functionalism, which theory asserts
that mental events are no more than neural events with certain causal
roles.

14. As the diligent reader can
work out, the Identity Theory within Lenient Functionalism is of
this sort.

15. The names
may be misleading. In an ordinary sense of `type', types of mental
properties might go with types of neural properties without nomic
connection. To assert mental properties are in nomic connection with
neural properties is indeed to assert that types go with types, but to
assert that types go with types is not necessarily to assert nomic
connection.

16. For elaboration of my own
view of this point, on which there is now some agreement, see the
books mentioned in Note 1 above and also `The Argument for Anomalous
Monism',
Analysis 1982, `Smith and the Champion of Mauve', Analysis 1984, and
`The
Union Theory and Anti-Individualism', Mental Causation, ed. J. Heil and
A.
Mele (Oxford University Press, 1993).

17. In fact allowing for nomic
connection, so long as only neural properties are allowed to be
causal, will result in an inconsistent theory. See my discussion of
Neural
Causation with Psychoneural Correlation, A Theory of Determinism: The
Mind,
Neuroscience, and Life-Hopes, or Mind and Brain, in each case pp. 154-7.

18. It may be
useful to relate some usages. The genus mental events, as mentioned at
the
beginning of this paper, has in it the kinds or species which include
beliefs
generally and intentions generally. Each kind or species has in it a
multitude
of particular or token mental events. Each of these is of a type -- the
type which includes identical token events.

19. I now have
some doubt that nomic connection between mind and brain must be
one-many.
There is something to be said for a one-one relation. What I have no
doubt
about is that the mind-brain connection is nomic.

20. However,
see Davidson's recent and perhaps revisionary account of supervenience
in
`Thinking Causes', in Mental Causation.

21. In particular I have in
mind Davidson's objections to psychoneural nomic connection in `Mental
Events', op. cit.